


Long Lost but I Have Found

by Delatrista



Category: RWBY
Genre: F/M, blacksunweek2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-26
Updated: 2020-07-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:00:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25506343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Delatrista/pseuds/Delatrista
Summary: Blake had never been a heavy sleeper.
Relationships: Blake Belladonna/Sun Wukong
Kudos: 10





	Long Lost but I Have Found

Blake had never been a heavy sleeper. Her mother used to joke, back when such levity was natural and their family had been more than fractured parts, that she kept her parents up for months after her birth out of a stubborn commitment to prevent them from achieving a full night’s rest. Back then, she would laugh along with her mother whenever they talked about her infancy. She enjoyed hearing the stories of a little girl who hadn’t yet learned what suffering meant, who only knew pain in the scrape on her knee or the burn of too-hot food on her tongue. Those times were pleasant and devoid of heartache; her childhood years followed too quickly, and gave her a reason to sleep little. 

Her dreams became the stage for her imagination to write plays she never wanted to see. Nightmares, enriched by atrocities she witnessed at rallies and protests. Humans made of shadows reached for her with clawing fingers. They screamed words no child should hear and frothed at their mouths. Monster, they screeched, filthy beast! Even though they were the ones tearing at her limbs in a blood-filled haze. That they were the ones tugging at her ears. They condemned her in her dreams just as they did in the waking world. The pulling on her fur echoed with the pain she felt when they did it in reality. It didn’t matter that her parents tried to shield her from the worst that humanity had to offer their kind. She saw it anyway, felt it anyway, and the memories played out in her sleep in vivid recollection. 

When she joined the White Fang, the nightmares took on a crimson tint. Colored at the edges by fiery violence and charcoal death. She had rarely seen Grimm before she ran away, but their visages became prominent as the years went on. Bone-white masks splattered by red streaks, watching her with hints of sapphire through black slits.

She was no better off now than she was a year and a half ago.

Water lapped against the dock, and the shore beneath it. It stirred restlessly against her feet, echoing the roil of emotion she felt within. She sat with her legs hanging over the edges of the salt-stained wood while she hunched into herself. She stared vacantly at the ocean, spread out in an endless expanse of ink-black waves. It reflected the ebony horizon of the sky and the shattered moon, hung low above it like a watchful eye, and its reflection wavered on the water’s surface while the ocean followed its invisible pull.

She had retreated from the place which should be her sanctuary, her home, for the fifth time this week. Like the ocean being directed by the moon’s gravity, she was drawn from her sleep to the shoreline by night terrors. Her skin was still clammy with cold sweat, and electrified with residual fear. It will be hours yet before she returns to the safety of the chieftain’s palace. Even knowing her life is in danger from the girl she once called a friend, she felt too trapped by those walls, and the love of her parents, who were still waiting for the rest of her to come home.

How could she, though? Her body was on Menagerie, but her mind remained in Vale. She doesn’t know how to leave those burning halls. Her dreams relived the Fall night after night, the fires and the screams and the red eyes blurred with tears and the pain— 

And no matter how desperate her parents were to have the little girl who begged them for another bedtime story, she couldn’t give them that. Her mother wouldn’t be able to soothe the memories away with fairy tales, and her father couldn’t shield her from what she’s seen with strong arms alone. 

Once upon a time, those stories and that protection had been enough. But Blake was not that child, anymore. She’d changed. She’s a stranger to them, a warrior wearing their daughter’s face. But they kept trying to understand her, to give her the space she so obviously needed. It hurt her to know that, even when it should be a balm. 

Her leg kicked outward, creating a splash that surged against the onyx tide that swept over her feet. The electricity coursing over her skin hadn’t abated, and it was a wonder how she hadn’t been electrocuted from the current meeting the water. She felt…too restless. The energy urged her to move— to run— but there was nowhere to go on this cramped little island. The best she could manage was coming to the waterfront, and it wasn’t enough. She kicked the waves again, directing her frustration into the water. Her fingers tightened around the dock’s planks hard enough she felt she could leave grooves the shape of her hands in the wood. The sky, filled with stars which glint coldly above her, looked so empty as she looks to it. Red, white, and yellow pinpricks sparked against the void. It made her feel lonely.

She wasn’t alone for long. 

Eventually, footsteps padded along the boardwalk behind her. As they approached she felt the vibrations through the planks, moving towards where she sat with open intent. No worry stirred in her, however. If Ilia was going to make her move, Blake knew she wouldn’t be so loud about it. She wouldn’t tread on every brittle plank as if going out of her way to announce her presence. A poor assassin, that would make her, just like this person walking with carefree steps. No, all of Kuo Kuana was sound asleep…save for one person. 

“Is this seat taken?” Sun’s voice carried to her with the breeze coming off the ocean.

Her ears twitched instinctively. They swiveled to follow the sound, but she didn’t offer him a reply. Shortly after, Sun flopped down beside her. Out of the corner of her eye she watched as he kicked off his yellow sneakers, tucked his socks into them, and joined her in dipping his feet into the ocean until they were swallowed up by the darkness. He sighed at the touch of the cool water. And then silence.

Blake didn’t look at him. He was too bright. A touch of the sun against the backdrop of the night sky, and she thought she could go blind from his optimism if she turned her gaze his way. She knew why he was here; both in this moment, and at all times since The Pride docked in Kuo Kuana’s port. He had ideas of supporting her. Of helping her. Whatever that meant. 

They sat in the quiet and the dark for some time. She didn’t want to break the silvery sheen of fragile peace that hung over them, but knew it was inevitable regardless. Sun would just keep at his efforts, even if it went as slow as getting blood from a stone.

She found it equal parts refreshing, and irritating. He never knew when to quit; she wasn’t sure the word was even in his vocabulary. But the idea that someone out there refused to give up on her, no matter the mistakes she’d made or the sins she’d committed…it was dangerously appealing her. His optimism was a bright flame, one he constantly held out towards her with helping hands and open ears. She was a moth constantly drawn to it despite knowing she would get burned by that boundless hope he held in his grasp. 

“Couldn’t sleep again, huh?” Sun finally asked. She’d been wondering when he would break the quiet, how much time it would take him. It wasn’t very long, though he never seemed capable of staying still. Even so far back as his first days in Vale, he always talked to fill silence like it was the reason he’d been put on Remnant.

Blake shrugged. She didn’t miss the fact that he’d said again, as if he was aware she’d been stealing away from the Belladonna estate for several nights now. It didn’t surprise her; spending every day with Sun at her side for the better part of three months meant they were very much attuned to each other’s movements.

She waited another moment, trying to draw the quiet out as long as she could, before she parted her lips. Making her voice rise through her chest felt like she was pulling a boulder uphill with twine, and it hurt. “Do you get nightmares?” she asked.

Sun was silent as he thought over her question. She could practically hear the gears turning in his mind while they stared over the ocean.

“Yeah,” he finally said. “Who doesn’t?”

Blake traced imaginary constellations between unrelated stars after he trailed back into silence. “What are they about?” she continued, as she followed the pattern of what she imagined to be a dragon with wide, unfurling wings caught mid-flight. The pinprick of a yellow star formed its eye.

Part of her hoped he would refuse to answer. It was already enough to carry the burdens of her fears. To take on the knowledge of his seemed…daunting.

Sun hummed in thought. “Plenty of things,” he started cryptically. Blake quirked a brow when he didn’t elaborate, and Sun must have noticed, because he continued with an air of forced levity. “Like…one time I had a nightmare I was made of bread, and birds kept pecking at me…” He chuckled, as if he were remembering the punchline to a bad joke. Blake didn’t laugh along.

Then he spoke again, before she had the chance to chide him.

“I guess, uh, I have a lot of nightmares about losing people. My team, my family—” Blake’s ears perked up at that, “—my friends…and you.”

She frowned, but didn’t look at him. “Me?” she repeated.

Sun shrugged beside her. They were sat so close together that his shoulder brushed her arm. “Yeah. Usually about…after you left. Not that I’m blaming you! But…most of the time you’re always too far ahead of me, and no matter how hard I try to catch up, you always disappear. Or, I can’t see you, but I can hear you hurting, and I can’t help. That one’s the worst,” he finished lamely. 

Guilt ridden twinges stabbed like small needles beneath her ribcage. “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice hoarse and quiet beneath the steady surge of the waves underneath them. In her mind, she was consumed with the thought that Sun wasn’t the only one burdened by nightmares of her. She thought of her former teammates, crying her name out in the dark and hearing nothing back. It made her shoulders curl forward and her eyes sting.

“You don’t need to be,” Sun said. “You aren’t doing anything wrong. Nightmares happen to everyone! They just show things we don’t want to confront, that’s all.” 

“I…” She scowled at the water. She couldn’t muster the energy to argue with him at that moment.

“Do you wanna talk about yours? I’m all ears,” Sun offered, when she didn’t continue. 

Blake kicked against the water, and watched as the cold tide surged around her feet to continue on its path undeterred. The memories of dreams came rushing back along with it. The fires burning hot against her skin, the mechanical whirring of the Atlesian Knights, and the feel of steel and wires giving way beneath her blade. The tide washed back, and she thought about the red that had consumed her final thoughts before she fled. “I see Beacon,” she whispered.

She didn’t want to say anything else. She didn’t need to. Sun had been there, after all. He’d seen the Grimm, the death and destruction they left in their wake. He’d seen her after Adam’s attack too, how broke she’d been and the way she’d been consumed with the fear that he was hiding in every shadow, watching her to decide who his next victim would be.

An arm wrapped around her shoulders as she spiraled, bound in muscle and warm through the layer of her clothing. She startled, and water arced in onyx droplets from where her foot leapt out of the ocean, but soon she was pressed to Sun’s side and enveloped in more of that confounding warmth. Her eyes widened inadvertently, and she froze as her body instinctually urged her to move, but she didn’t move to push him away. 

Instead, she let herself sink into the feel of him next to her. 

Her head tilted until she nestled onto his shoulder, where she could feel her ears skim his neck in feather-light brushes. If she focused, she could hear the steady marching of his pulse, slow and steady like the waves. Unbeknownst to her, her heartbeat began to slow to match it, and the whirlwind of memories in her mind began to calm with each thump she heard. 

She couldn’t say it aloud yet; but she was glad that Sun was here. Glad that he so willingly abided her fretful nature, that he weathered the storms of her guilt with so much ease. She didn’t know how it had happened, but he had become a constant in her life sometime since that fateful day on Vale’s docks. A beacon to follow in the night, and even when his antics got him in more trouble than she was wanting to handle…she couldn’t imagine herself here on her own. It was strange, she thought, how not even a month ago she had been prepared to live the rest of her life with only her thoughts as company. She couldn’t imagine that life now, not when she had the solid weight of Sun beside her. His fingers curled firmer around the curve of her bicep, and she shuffled another inch closer to him. 

“You don’t have to be okay right now,” Sun said, barely audible over the whisper of the tide. “But you don’t have to do this alone, either.” Blake’s ear twitched to brush the underpart of his jaw.

Her eyes traced from the horizon, where the broken moon was dropping its first shards into the ocean, up to the stars that still shone in silent observation of the world spread out before them. The air was warming, and tinges of orange were just beginning to burn away the jet-black sky, turning the parts the sunlight touched a deep, melancholic blue.

The world still wasn’t quite awake and, as far as she was concerned, the two of them were the only ones who existed here, during the breaking of dawn over their heads. That solitude, perhaps, gave her a confidence she wouldn’t have had when the sun was higher and crowds surrounded them on every side; but she brought her arm up, behind Sun’s back, and laid her hand over his shoulder with a gentle touch. “Thank you,” she whispered.

But it didn’t feel right, to leave it at that. To have Sun come out here for her, to hear him admit to night terrors she never could have guessed he had, and not say anything else. “And I’m not going anywhere. You’re…” she cut off as a yawn forced its way out of her, but she continued determinedly, “…you’re stuck with me.”

Sun laughed softly under her head, and a moment later she felt the press of his ear against her temple. “I’m not stuck with you if there’s nowhere else I’d rather be,” he replied, and a small smile grew across her lips, hidden from his view. 

She couldn’t tell him yet, but maybe one day she would. The secret warmth that had spread from Sun had taken root inside her, and it was a secret she guarded tightly; but someday, she could imagine herself repeating those words back to him. There’s nowhere else I’d rather be, she thought, and burrowed further into Sun’s hold.


End file.
